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Yeah… No. You're not about to go traipsing into a trap, or talking with villains. Even if they weren't traps, you weren't ready to talk with them yet. You needed more tools. More tinkertech. You'd spent so long on the Hyperforge, you actually want to see it work.

Your laboratory is jacked into your plugsuit, long tubes leading up to the control schema. Ambulatory arms reach out from the ceiling, each of them clamping small delicate pieces together.

The emotional aura aspect was relatively easy to generate. You remember making that Famine Engine to mimic Skitter's power, and you use the same technique here. It's just energy, after all, albeit telepathic. It was like making a homemade radio, if the antenna coil was made out of a custom-designed pseudo-neural wire, made out of a very precise alloy. It converted electrical power into psionic, which worked pretty well. Then you just had to find a wavelength that wouldn't mess with anybody, animals included. It wasn't really hard- things needed to be keyed and modulated extremely precisely to affect people, which is why it's kind of impressive that telepathy existed as a power thing at all- There was no such thing as a 'one size fits all' that would affect even a fraction of the population. People kind of had their own wavelengths, animals included.

The forcefield aspect, surprisingly, was a lot harder. You ended up having to use the small DNA sample from Glory Girl, trick it into propagating whatever esoteric signal allowed her power to anchor to it, and only then extract the energy. From there you had to figure out the exact wavelength of psionic power would power it, and effectively reverse engineer the existing field to figure out how to manipulate it. It began with a single sliver of force, but with some careful infusions you're able to seed it, solidifying what should be energy into a very carefully-designed crystal. Like flavoring homemade popsicles.

You aren't able to do the bullshit 'divert energy into another universe' like the source power, not perfectly, so the forcefield won't be nearly as strong… but on the other hand, since you're not wasting power on that, you're able to sustain the field's tension much more. It won't break from a single bullet or a hard punch, like Glory's shield, but stronger attacks will be able to break it and rip right through. A higher floor, but a lower ceiling. It's a compromise you're more than happy with, considering that stronger attacks tend to be a lot less common, and the normal limit is just slightly too easy to break to be useful.

From there, took a few days and a lot of experimentation with the Daemon before you were able to figure out how to construct the sub-drones. A powered forcefield acted as a physical object, but wouldn't move in response to other physical objects- only interacting with either itself, or the psionic energy it fed on. Certain angles would interact strangely with other angles, parallel surfaces the same size and shape would 'lock' with one another, where rounded surfaces would destabilize and 'push' the forcefield in various directions. With enough data and testing, you were able to design an 'analog' control core, as analog as the forcefield could be, to receive the broadcast and interpret it, feeding that control through to the rest of the sub-drone. You're not sure how Glory Girl's power could morph and shift to fit her body shape, so you just chalk it up to power bullshit.

From there, the hard work was done. You had the forcefield propagator, the psionic relay, and the hard parts of the programming was done. The real brilliance was designing their computers to run off the same psionic energy as the relay, allowing an adaptive neural network to form between multiple crystals. Now you just had to build the drone's shell and propulsion. For the latter, you gave it a marble-sized levitation core. While the cores didn't start out very strong, and only got exponentially better until it got to the size of the hyperforge's core, one this small would be perfect for the drones. It was only a backup source, anyway- the primary source of propulsion would be the forcefield around the thing, once it was in the air.

Finally, it was done. You stepped back from the desk, the workshop's arms pulling themselves away. The drone looked roughly like a teardrop, a black lens visible on the rounded 'bulb' side, the one you've been thinking of as the face. The antenna hid in the pointy end, guarded by panels of the same lightweight golden alloy that made up your wings and rigid parts of your plugsuit. An 'eye' with a 'tail'.

You slip a small void ichor canister into it. It won't always need fuel, not once you dupe the psionic broadcaster for the Hyperforge, but it's important to have some for booting up and for backup purposes.

"Boot it up," You say. The Daemon clicks, and after a few moments, the eye slowly levitates.

"Displaying view," It says, and you see a small window appear in your visor. Everything the eye perceives.

"Broadcast sub-drones. One of each variant."

Three shimmering, golden teardrops appear, each ethereal and hovering in place. Smaller, about the size of a clenched fist.

One had a flattened, nested fractal hovering in front of it. The shield variant, able to take layers of attack and presumably a lot of damage. Another had a strangely drifting 'tail' of beads orbiting behind it, allowing it to accelerate in one direction much faster than the others. It would shatter upon contact, but moving at that high speeds it could deal a lot of damage. And the last had a hovering set of fingers extending from the central orb, the 'bulb' of the drone serving as the hand's palm. Defense, Offense, Utility.

"Displaying Child Drone Views," the Daemon says. Three more, fuzzier and smaller windows appear in your visor as well, each updating once a second, spaced equally between the three. Small, nearly-invisible sparks appeared in front of their 'faces' each time they took a snapshot. The forcefields couldn't really 'see' well, but you were able to figure out a clumsy sort of densitometric vision by taking momentary snapshots and checking for energy drain.

"Daemon, deactivate direct control," You say. You need to test the drone's onboard intelligence, after all.

After playing catch with a dozen 'hand' drones, and seeing how well the 'shield' drone could stay in front of your pointed finger as if it were a deadly weapon, you're satisfied. They're working well.

"Heavy armor." You say. The sub-drones shift, clustering up around the main-drone, their shields layering over it on all angles.

"Diagnostics," You say. The Daemon pulls up a list of various settings and statistics, allowing you to peruse them.

Huh. The main drawback on how many sub-drones each main-drone could construct appears to be… computational power. One main-drone can run up to six sub-drones, more with the Daemon's direct assistance. But since the network will get stronger and smarter the more main-drones you have, that means that two could make.. .anywhere from thirteen to fifteen, as far as you can tell.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Now you get to watch as the Hyperforge consumes all of your hard work and hope it doesn't break.

Drone Misfire Result: 65, Safe.

Hyperforge Misfire Result: 67, Shining Drone Scanned.

"Thank you very much for your service," You say, holding out a hand. One after the other, you shake Gregor, Faultline, and Newter's hands. "You three have been invaluable."

"Not sure how much help we've really been," Newter says. "Nobody even really attacked."

"Your presence alone most likely stopped a lot of problems," You say. In fact, if Coil tried a timeline attacking, that's probably why he backed off. "And, well, your presence also means I didn't go insane working up here alone this entire time."

"Really? I should have charged you more for that, then." Faultline says, though you can see her smiling beneath her mask.

"Heh, how about I just give you a five-star yelp review instead?" You respond. She chuckles.

The four of you step over the ledge… and a dozen sub-drones appear, each of them extending long, thin forcefields. Platform Sub-drones. You still only have the one main-drone, but with a cluster of duplicated psionic transmitters aboard the Hyperforge for power, and the Daemon mounted to your plugsuit, you really only need the one for this.

"Take care," You say.

"You as well, my friend." Gregor says with a nod.

"See you next year," You drawl. The platform descends, diagonally taking them down to the docks.

And then… you're alone, on the Hyperforge. A chill runs through you as it blows, though you can't feel it.

Merry Christmas, Icarus.

Now you just have to survive 2010 a second time… and you already know how to start.

Resources: -2, (10)

Depending on the voted actions, one or more may be takenIn front of you is a cold, wet cup of noodles. You drop a capsule into it- and as it disintegrates in the water, the small packets of void ichor are released- and the noodles immediately start to heat up. No bunsen burner needed.

The majority of the area supposedly called Blasto's are, well, not the greatest. Some cape fight had knocked down portions of the highway and a huge turnpike intersection, leaving it in ruins during the Boston Games, and they'd never really been reconstructed in the same spot. area was being put to good use, though. It was covered in overgrown weeds and plants that, to the untrained eye, seemed like perfectly normal stuff that would be found in the area. Even the Daemon had taken quite a while to realize they weren't normal. In fact, the only hint that they weren't normal was that someone- various someones, in different outfits and builds- were casually walking over to them, to water them, and in one case, spent a half hour plucking every single leaves from one of them, putting them carefully into a baggie.

You sit back, and take a sip of the noodles. It's steaming and warm, now, and the small sparking pill at the bottom is slightly dwindling as it keeps the cup warm. Perfect. You sit back, lounging in the phase carrier as your drones do the hard work.

Spread throughout the sky, staying away from specific buildings, are your drones. All of them are subdrones, a specific design made to be as small and subtle as possible. Color-coding the forcefield wasn't easy, and even then you're having to cancel subdrones to replace them with differently-colored variants as the day progresses. Their snapshots aren't perfect, but with enough of them, with the Daemon attached to the main drone to boost their number, you can make up for quality with quantity. The main drone itself is sitting half-buried in a pile of rubble, put there late last night just before the sun rose.

Each of these people are being marked, identified, and you're scanning them as you watch them go place to place. Some are going home. Some are going to and from a few noted meeting areas. Old trailers sitting by the river. Another, a moving and storage company.

It's only due to the main drone that you get anything that confirms your suspicions. One of the figures marked as 'Possible Blasto ally 5', approximated to be a teenage male according to his clothes and build, happened to face the main drone long enough for you to zoom in with the higher-fidelity camera.

Only to see photosynthetic pale green skin and inhuman eyes hiding underneath his hood and handkerchief mask. Inhuman. A tinkertech minion, not a human worker. But he's moving and acting like a person, like he's more intelligent than an animal.

But now that you know what to look for, you put the noodles aside and start telling the Daemon everything you're noticing about it. The facial coverings, the specifics of the build, the dirt smudges on the knees of their jeans, and unusually heavy boots. The strange walking gait. And with it, roughly half the allies are being renamed as the Daemon goes back through all the data you've been picking up. More and more.

Blasto has human minions, that's for sure. Ones you call 'goons' for ease of nomenclature. Mundane minions. One of them is standing by a street corner, near a run-down residential area. He's selling stuff. Drugs, probably the result of the plants. His other goons sometimes stop and chat, sometimes to eachother, and they don't care about walking past strangers. But the plantmen… they don't go anywhere near the residential areas, staying near the trailers. You're more and more sure that's where they're staying, and possibly where the drugs are being made from plant byproducts. They avoid people whenever possible. The other goons, the human ones… They spend less than a minute near the trailers, only going inside to leave again with more product to sell. The divisions between the two are more and more clear the more you watch.

Then you see him. He's actually one of the first people you thought to be a goon, a perfectly normal man in a hoodie and jeans. The one that had gone out watering a few of them. But as for how you know he's Blasto?

One of your drones, from above the trailers, are able to see him carefully unwrapping one of the planetmen's masks out behind one of the trailers, out of view from the river. He'd partially undone the creature's disguise to examine what looks like a brown swatch of an old injury- or age, you're not sure. You didn't have nearly enough fidelity to see what exactly he did, but once you figure out which one's Blasto, you have all the data you need.

He's staying in the moving company you noticed some people going to and from. It has the storage space for a tinker's lab, an excuse for random people to be entering and leaving at most times, and the company's ownership is a puzzle that the Daemon even finds some trouble deciphering. It's the same sort of dizzying, nested ownerships that capes the world over use to hide their ill-owned companies. It's one of the services Numberman provides, in fact, and you wouldn't be surprised to find that Blasto used those exact services himself.

So. A half-dozen goons. A half-dozen plantmen, and who knows what sorts of other tinkertech hybrids he might have growing inside. He's got income, a drug business, albeit not a huge one. Even considering that he's probably growing souped up, primo tinkertech product, he's probably just making even, considering how much resources a proper tinker takes to make stuff.

[] Sneak in your ringwraith disguise at night. Kill anything inhuman that tries to stop you. Leech Blasto. (+2 Affinity)

[] Meet with Blasto as Icarus. If he seems accepting, offer to pay him for using the Leech Device on him. If not, make up some excuse. (+? Resources)

[] Meet with Blasto as Icarus for more business matters, involving buying, selling, or trading tinkertech. Perhaps even working together.

[] Keep an eye on him with the drones. You need more surveillance. Lighten up on the secrecy in exchange for more data.

[] Keep an eye on him with the drones. Secrecy is still paramount.

[] Something else?